Sanatorium
by groet-havregrynsson
Summary: He visits her, once. Kaworu and Asuka.


I don't own Neon Genesis Evangelion.

**Sanatorium **

_Posted May 16th, 2008_

He visits her, once. Hair darkened to a dull grey with rain, dripping skies onto the bleached flooring, shoes squeaking noisily against the tiles. There is no real music in this room save the quiet beeps and hums of machinery, attached to her with gel and plastic disks, scribbling nonsense to the side**.** She's not moving, and her eyes are shut tight, but he can see the fog of her breath against the mask pressed to her face (attached with hose, an ugly and corpulent thing set to distract him, for a moment) and it dispels any illusion of death.

Her skin is a pale, sickly-white; not unlike his own. The air is filled with the smell of sex and sweat, sheets worn to the point of loose threads and fraying edges. Tired, the shrill creaking of wheels as he leans too heavily. In the space of time that he's occupied this place, wandering from hall to hall in search of the Second, he hasn't seen a single soul.

Kaworu grasps the fabric that covers her, pulls at it, tugs it off with both hands. He wants to know what she looks like. What she dresses like. How she speaks, how she acts, how she feels - he wants to know why Shinji is so upset over her, and the First. Asuka is barely clothed, lying on the bed in no more than panties, electrodes attached to her chest in order to monitor her pulse.

Completely defenseless.

Her underwear is cotton: striped with white and pink and green. His hands slide over her thin hips, her smooth stomach, her round, soft breasts. Fitting over curves and splaying over stretches of something that he, at the moment, still cannot understand except for that fact that _she looks very young_. The frame of the bed creaks as he sits upon its mattress, frowning. And he knows that this Sohryu girl isn't special, after all.

The smell of disinfectant and dusty metal. The quiet whirring that almost sets his teeth on edge. White walls, white floors, white blankets: white, too-familiar ceiling above his head. Nagisa turns and scans over her again, looking for something he might have missed, something other than the idea that she is _female_ and he knows that his words will never be as weighted as hers, his hands will never be as gentle, his presence never so very, very small. And he knows for that, he hates her.

And, hate. It's almost foreign to him, would be if Shinji had not made it so achingly familiar, something that saps the strength from his very being when he pauses too long, and rests, and thinks. A word that bites and hisses and snatches at his soul, that spits itself out and fills his mouth with a metallic sound, of blood. Syllables razor-slick, and they sound almost mechanical when they leave his mouth. Almost inhuman. Kaworu's hands are at her face, his body twisted, peering at her closed lids. Watching eyelashes like freshly ground ink, like the numbers four and seven, like the realization that death is always a possibility and _no_, not for him. Her flesh, baby-pink and as delicate as rosebuds, and his mind speaks with _beware of thorns_ and the noise of machinery is growing louder, and -

And water droplets slide lazily down her neck, long, slight fingers fitting almost perfectly. Pink and white, and he remembers, somewhere, that this is a thing to celebrate with the taste of sugar and a sip of tea. Textbook learning. In his mind the frantic sounds of the electrocardiograph beside him is accompanied by the cello, by the violin, and by the whispers of a piano that plays its high tone and repeats and repeats and repeats…

He imagines that he's being watched. Shinji's standing in he doorway, silently, eyes downcast. Hair slick and flattened from the weather. Wet clothes conforming almost awkwardly to his body. And maybe it's real, and maybe it's not, because Kaworu lets go and the shrill notes slow down, again. The room is too quiet without it, and he almost reaches a second time.

The fifth knows there will be marks, later. Thick, ugly blotches to mar her perfect neck blue and black and blue. He can see her breath misting, and the rise and fall of her chest as she dreams of nothing, and the sheets warped and strewn. The blanket he is kneeling on is slightly damp, but his hair is dry, and he covers her with it gently before stepping onto the tiled ground. It's late: Ikari is sleeping. He needs to return before his time is up here. Before…

Then it is nothing but the rubber of his shoes against the floor, the click of the door as it shuts behind him, an empty hallway and the low, slow notes of a song that drifts to mind. His fingers are calloused, and he imagines the drawn-out sighs of the violin, and he smiles, content.


End file.
